For some reason I was inspired to duplicate the structure in the article. It was my first attempt to build something from scratch, and the three towers presented an interesting challenge. (Remember, this was 1975!) I finally ended up wrapping scribed basswood sheets around three beer cans to form the towers. I believe they were Horseshoe Curve beer cans! The cans turned out to be just about the right size for the RMC plans. Then, I had to figure out how to duplicate the steel bands that held the boards in place. Naive as I was, I used rubber bands! The shed that went with the coal yard was more difficult, and it has long since disappeared. But the coal elevator and towers are still around after more than thirty years.
I believe that a commercial copy of this particular structure was produced and has been available for many years. My version was assembled from basswood with Ambroid cement. It held up fairly well over the years, but eventually the glue dried out and the rubber bands broke, with sad results.
The model sits on a shelf in the train room, and I keep thinking that one day I will rebuild it -- but it would mean replacing the rubber bands with a more prototypical system of restraints, which I just haven't had the time or interest to tackle. I keep the building simply because it was my first....
But not my last! I model Eastern narrow gauge -- specifically, the East Broad Top Railroad. Over the years I have discovered that tackling a relatively unknown prototype means there are very few models available for the layout -- even kits are rare indeed. White Ground Models produced a dozen or so kits of EBT related buildings -- I have them all -- but many of the lineside structures exist only in photos or, if you are lucky, in drawings and plans. So if I want to build a replica of this small south central Pennsylvania railroad, I have to do a lot of scratchbuilding and kit bashing.
Many of the available kits are models of the EBT shop complex in Rockhill, Pennsylvania. But at least half of the shop buildings will have to be scratchbuilt, including the well known Orbisonia Station and the brick roundhouse. My first attempt at scratchbuilding the EBT was the car shop, which had to be selectively compressed because of its enormous size. It was a fun project, and the results turned out better than I had hoped. I have yet to finish the corrugated metal roof.
I find that scratchbuilding and kit bashing give me the opportunity to try new techniques and materials. For example, my efforts to build a model of the EBT's stone block enginehouse in Mount Union were stymied at first by the lack of suitable building materials. Then a friend, Jim Vliet, sent me a closeup photo of the stone block wall, and I decided to try duplicating it.
Using PowerPoint, I made a series of copies of the photograph, cropping them and arranging them side-by-side to produce a sheet of stone block paper. I built the engine house from styrene, then cemented the paper stone block walls to the styrene. Here is the result:
Not far from the Mount Union dual gauge yard I discovered a number of unique little houses, all more or less identical. A little research found that they had been constructed by the General Refractories Company (GREFCO) for its brickyard employees.
This was a new challenge for scratchbuilding. There were no plans, no drawings, no measurements -- just a handful of photographs. In this case, I drew my own plans, working backwards from typical door and window sizes to figure the dimensions of the structure itself. Once the plans were down on paper, it was a fairly easy step to cut basswood lap siding to size and build a number of similar little homes for the layout. These turned out well enough for Bob Brown to publish the following picture in the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette.
Of course, it isn't always necessary to build from scratch. When an existing model is "close enough" for my purposes, I am perfectly happy to alter it to suit. For example, almost everyone is familiar with the "W. E. Snatchem Funeral Home" -- you might even own one! I built the original plastic model per the instructions, but it really didn't fit the needs of my current layout. Then one day I noticed that the dimensions of the house were fairly typical for a small central Pennsylvania town like Mount Union. With a little "bashing" -- removing the small bay on the side and the dormer on the roof, simplifying the porch, and replacing the shingle roof with a standing seam metal roof -- and finally, wrapping the entire structure in "Insulbrick" siding from Clever Models, voila! A typical Pennsylvania house:
My current scratchbuilding project is to reproduce, in miniature, the little mining town of Robertsdale at the southern end of the EBT. Robertsdale was a company town, built by the railroad and the coal company to house workers for the mines on the eastern slope of Broad Top Mountain. The heart of the town was a group of four buildings, usually referred to as "company square" where Main Street crossed the EBT right of way. Only one of these buildings -- the station -- exists in kit form. The other three must be scratchbuilt. So far I have finished the station and the company store -- the oldest building in Robertsdale. Right now I am working on the old Post Office building -- a rather non-descript stone block structure with a hip roof.
Fortunately, the Friends of the East Broad Top (FEBT) now offer sheets of resin cast stone blocks identical to those used in three of the four buildings in company square. The project has a way to go, but here you can see the structure beginning to take shape:
Scratchbuilding and kit bashing are a necessity when modeling a less well-known prototype. They can also be challenging and fun! In fact, over the years I have been involved in the hobby, some of my most enjoyable hours have been engaged in creating "something out of nothing". And it all began with three beer cans and a bag of rubber bands!
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